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My Book, Saddam: The Origins, The Rise and The Fall |
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Saturday, 31 May 2008 15:23 |
I am continuing with this posting to update The Hanoudi Letter with installments from My Book on Saddam, still short of a publisher who is willing to take care of my work I am left with no other option but to publish on line like I have been doing for the last few months. The following piece is the second part – on the fringe of the party- from the first section of the book, the origins of a tyranny.
Saddam One; the Origins of a Tyranny
Part B: On the Fringe of the Party
SADDAM was never a real or a sincere Ba’athist he has decided very early on that it could serve a very good vehicle for achieving his dreams and ambitions, he was attracted to the party because of its strict discipline the strength of its organization and the very great power which rests in the hands of its supreme authority. Its ideology and philosophy were of only a minor importance and only in his early days with it and in the end when he was at the summit he turned it into just one more instrument in the large number of organizations which provided him with the power to rule unchallenged for the many years he did. In fact the party became nothing more than an obedient horde serving his various schemes conspiracies and wars he was always looked at by the more educated members of the party with a great deal of suspicion and disregard, the early members were mostly intellectuals army officers students and lawyers , he stood out for his limited education his aggressiveness and bad manners he was very ambitious and had a great penchant for violence he was relegated to one of the least significant offices of the party a very low positioning the still very small branch of the party in Iraq which he perceived as an insult an insult which he never forgot and to which the whole organization will pay a most fearful price in later years.
THE political temperature has during the whole of the fifties reached very high levels, the country was ruled as a monarchy by a branch of the old Hashemite family as a reward by the British for the services they rendered during the first world war and as compensation to the many unfulfilled promises they have given to the head of the family for the support he provided to the British against Germany during the 1914-1918 war, at this time the king was underage and the affairs of the country were conducted in his name by his uncle as a guardian, the royal family and the whole ruling establishment was looked at as British stooges in spite of the fact that the British had few years earlier granted the country independence after having ruled it as a colony following the end of the first world war, but it was never a real independence and they were still in control of the more important functions of the supposedly independent country thus the perception.
SO during the first hour of the 14th of July 1958 a small group of young middle class army officers who called themselves the free officers of Iraq and led by a mid ranking officer from a middle class family a brigadier Kassim who was moving his brigade through Baghdad suddenly turned his guns against the most important symbols of the regime, the royal palace the guardian’s palace which were incidentally very modest affairs and nothing like the huge mansions the world has seen from Saddam and the ministry of defense, the broadcasting station and few others, the sudden coup encouraged a very vicious uprising which within few hours and in spite of some truly heroic resistance by few faithful officers succeed in overthrowing the monarchy and the government which resulted in the death of the young king and his uncle and their families and many political figures who were associated with the monarchy and its various institutions and a lot of the society’s elite. The 14th of July revolution as it was always referred to was a very bloody affair the bodies of the slain monarch and that of his uncle and some other members of the royal family and those of several other old politicians and diplomats were dragged in the streets of Baghdad by a frenzied hysterical mob the viciousness and brutality of the acts were simply abhorrent, but nevertheless the new regime was firmly established its military base was bolstered by the support of another brigade which was under the command a colonel Aref. The new regime was within a very short time granted recognition by several countries including the western powers, a committee of three was established as the highest authority in the country under the appellation ‘the council of sovereignty’, the three were two Arabs a Sunni and a Shi’i and the third was Kurdish, but the committee and in spite of its grand name was powerless it was no more than a ceremonial body, its main duties were rubber stamping the laws and the decrees issued by the prime minister and entertaining foreign dignitaries, real power remained in the hands of the brigadier who was running the affairs of the state as a prime minister and continued to do so during his reign from the ministry of defense. The cabinet was a national unity government comprising the most of the political players on the scene and including the bath party which was represented by one minister the deputy prime minister’s job went to the Aref the colonel who participated in the overthrow of the old regime.
KASSIM who was later on promoted to General was a very nice gentleman absolutely incorruptible but politics wise was very naïve, he was unable to understand the realities and the undercurrents of the politics of the country and the nature of its leaders. The country was in a great flux following the coup and various local and outside forces were competing for ultimate control, to make things even more complicated Nasser was now in the name of Arab nationalism involving himself very actively in Iraqi politics, one of his most important proxies was in fact Aref the deputy prime minister but to a great many Iraqis those interferences were evidently not for purely altruistic reasons and were not welcome by the main body of the new authority including the prime minister himself. In the beginning the Ba’athists rejoiced in the coup and were flirting with him a lot and served him hoping to win him over to their side but they soon started to have problems with him similar to those they have already experienced with Nasser and they were becoming increasingly frustrated with his policies and his increasing reliance on the communists, so they threw their lot with the Nasserites which led to an increasing polarization of the situation which later on led to some very vicious encounters between the two sides in the capital and in some of the more important cities in the country like Mosul and Kirkuk which resulted in more polarization and forced Kassim into more reliance on the communists and the vicious circle continued. During all this turmoil Saddam was on the sidelines and was never active in any of these events, waiting for his moment.
THE situation has become so explosive and the Baathists were feeling increasingly threatened, the dangers were becoming so serious and were threatening their very existence so the party tried to preempt the catastrophe and decided to eliminate Kassim. The decision was taken by the Damascus leadership and the orders came from no less an authority than Aflaq himself, the local organization was not consulted it was involved only in the arrangements for its execution, the local party selected five young boys, the fifth was Saddam who has by then proved quite convincingly his credentials as a murderer. Towards the end of 1958 he has killed using his old pistol a distant relative of his because of some minor family dispute the murdered was a follower of Kassim , Saddam was tried by the coup’s court military court, which was functioning as a media organ rather than one for the administration of justice and was known for its harsh and very severe convictions but astonishingly enough Saddam was acquitted and was ready by the time the assassination plans were being hatched to participate in the attempt.
BEFORE dawn on the 7th of October 1959 Kassim was going home after a long day at the ministry of defense traveling down the central street in the capital in a simple unprotected car with only one young officer in the front seat who doubled as a secretary and a bodyguard, a schedule which he repeated daily when at a pre planed spot the car was received by a hail of bullets from four of the assassination squad Saddam was in the back his job was to protect his comrades when they would retreating after finishing the job with a taxi nearby to drive everybody out of the scene when the job would be finished, when the prime minister’s car was attacked the young captain left his seat and started shooting at the assailants injuring one of them in the chest who started bleeding which was a tremendous shock and a great surprise to the attackers who were on the average very young and much less than a well prepared team, they knew very little about weapons and has been given only a very short training to make things even worse two of the weapons in the hands of the attackers jammed and failed to function which completely confused the attackers who panicked and were on the verge of abandoning the mission, so when Saddam who was watching the action from behind and saw that it has failed flew out from the scene, he started running towards the waiting car during his escape he was superficially injured in the left foot from a shot by policeman who happened to be nearby, reaching the car and abandoning his comrades he forced the driver under the threat of his gun to drive him away in spite of the repeated requests of the driver to wait for the others who were finally left alone with their bleeding colleague, the taxi took him to a party safe house which was designated earlier, his wound was dressed after removing the small fragment of the bullet which has hit him was removed form his leg by a doctor who was a party member who was during the rule of Saddam forced out of the country where he was living as a refugee in Britain. Even the presence of a small fragment of a bullet in the fellow’s leg was later on denied by the same doctor who treated his superficial wound. Sometime later the other members of the team came dragging their injured one who was begging to be taken to a hospital for treatment which was very strongly opposed by Saddam claiming that that will put every body at risk so the poor injured fellow was left to bleed to his death and when the treatment of Saddam was completed he left the house to one of his relatives in Baghdad where he stayed the night and the next day the safe house was raided by the police immediately after Saddam has left it and everybody inside was arrested and later on were tied and sentenced to death but the sentence was not carried out they were pardoned by the man they wanted to assassinate, during the next night Saddam went back to his hometown in disguise were he was provided with a reasonable protection and then he was smuggled on the orders of his boss in Damascus through the western Iraqi desert through a route very well known to smugglers and thieves who very actively operated in that area and he was taken to the Syrian border were he was received by the military governor of the area who was a member of the Ba’ath were he stayed for few days and then traveled to Damascus were he stayed for about three months and from there he left to Cairo where he arrived on the twenty first of April 1960.
THE role of Saddam in the assassination attempt and the story of his escape following the attempt are described in the official documents of the party and the huge mass of literature written later on about it is simply staggering and all lies, his role was made to look more courageous and fateful than the events on the Normandy beaches during D Day during the last phases of the second world war or the descent of the first man on the surface of the moon but this was the usual, everything was false and lies Saddam’s role in the attempt was secondary but he is portrayed as the mastermind and the commander which is a farce and a big charade.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Thursday May 29, 2008
Berkley/Michigan
Email:
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